“Now, Old Turtle knew right away what it meant to go in search of nothing. He’d gone on that search himself, in a time back at the beginning of the world when he was young. Had he found nothing? No, he hadn’t, but he’d found something like it. As for finding nothing itself, he told them, none of us will, because it’s not for the likes of us.
“Who is it for, then? the Beaver wanted to know, and Old Turtle said, People. People want nothing, they want it more than anything, and they believe it belongs to them. They have never found it, or when they have found it they right away lose it again. And yet People have had nothing in their possession all along. At least a kind of People have had nothing in their possession.
“The Small Ugly People! the Beaver said, and slapped her tail on Old Turtle’s floor. The Crow, however, had never heard of such beings.
“Well, they’re small, said the Beaver, though not as small as a Chipmunk.
“They have narrow, hairy faces, said Old Turtle. But not as hairy as a Bear’s.
“They are ugly, said the Beaver, but not as ugly as a Toad.
“They hate big People, and stay far from their dwellings.
“Yet they love big People, and give them gifts so the People will love them.
“The Small Ugly People may give you nothing, said Old Turtle to the Crow. But they will want something in return.
“How will I find these Small Ugly People? the Crow asked.
“There is a Crow who knows of them, said Old Turtle. This Crow is the oldest Crow of this world, in the tallest tree of this world. You must seek and find that bird, and ask for her help. And now, he said, it is time for me to go back to sleep. And he clambered up onto his sleeping mat and drew his wrinkled old head into his shell.”
But no, no, it wasn’t like that, it was no such thing as that—down under the great lake to smoke a pipe with a Turtle—absurd! And yet though there was no Turtle in Dar Oakley’s story, there really were Small Ugly People, and advice from Ravens; Dar Oakley did in time travel to that lake, the one the People call Beautiful, and he went in search of nothing he knew of, toward the oldest Crow of this world: and this was the story that piece by piece One Ear had learned from him, and changed to suit himself.
It began the summer when he and One Ear first began to speak together, and One Ear came to know something of Dar Oakley’s history. Dar Oakley had no other business that summer—in spring he and Gray Feather had thought to dance that old dance, act that act, but something, maybe the weight of old losses, had kept them from it. Anyway he was alone with only his own mouth to feed.
He’d noticed, on his rounds through the realms of People and others, a pair of Ravens who seemed to take an interest in him. There were reasons a Raven might want to note the movements of a Crow; often the dense Crow clans and their constant here-I-am, there-you-are conversing brought Crows to big kills first, which the larger and more imperious Ravens following them could then dominate. But no—these Ravens weren’t watching Crows. They were watching him.
Then as he sat high in his Oak in the hot afternoon, vaguely hearing voices and thinking of nothing, he felt wings around him, and found the two Ravens, one on either side, regarding him.
“Masters,” Dar Oakley said, and becked gravely. It was the way Ravens were addressed, he seemed to recall, long ago and elsewhere. The Ravens exchanged a look and a sound at that—it might have been a laugh.
“You are,” one said, “Dar of Oak by Lea.”
“That’s your gname,” croaked the other.
“Well, yes,” Dar Oakley said, startled that Ravens, who would take no interest in a particular Crow unless it could do them some good, should know such a thing. Like all Crows, Dar Oakley knew the speech of Ravens; it was like his own, but grave and harsh.
“We have been sent in search of you,” one of them said. Dar Oakley thought they were a mated pair, though it was hard for a Crow to know for sure. “We have had to speak to many Crows.”
“Oh,” Dar Oakley said. “I’m sorry. But why . . .”
“Don’t question,” the larger one (female?) said. “We have come only to summon or send you.”
“Summon or send me where?”
“To marges of great lake of gnorth,” said the other, who Dar Oakley thought was the male. “To Crow of that place, who wishes Crow of your gname to come before her.”
“She does?”
The two Ravens now seemed to have exhausted their store of diplomacy, and flitted, ready to be off. “Will you go?” one asked, and the other looked skyward and murmured, “We would not want to have come so far for gnothing.”
“Masters!” Dar Oakley cried. “I’ll do what you say. But how will I find this Crow?”
“Crows said to us only this: she is oldest of all Crows, one with whom Crows of this world began.”
“Oh. Oh?”
“Summer is old, Crow. Better be gone.”
“But why,” Dar Oakley asked, “would Crows ask you, you Ravens, to find me?”
The two Ravens shared a look, as though pondering whether to tell a tale or not. Then the female said:
“Once, in a time not now, this oldest Crow did great thing for Hravens. A time that no Hraven or Crow can now remember.”
“Is said to have happened when that clan of Crows first came into this country,” the female said, and the haws slid over her eyes, as though her own words put her to sleep. “When these tallest trees were sprouts on forest floor. And tall trees now dead and rotted were saplings.”
“For this,” the other whispered, “Hravens have always been ready to do certain services for Crows.”
“Certain small services. At certain times. If convenient.”
“But what was it,” Dar Oakley asked, “that that Crow did for Ravens?”
“Hravens have forgot what Crow did,” the male Raven said.
“But obligation remains,” said the female, and lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
The two Ravens turned then, and fell heavily from the branch they sat on, and set off without farewell.
“But how will I know this Crow?” Dar Oakley called after them. “What is her name?”
“We know no gname,” growled the female.
“We have not ever seen her,” the other called.
“Perhaps never was such Crow.”
And they were gone.
Dar Oakley thought, No one in this world knows that name of mine: no one.
“For every being there is an oldest one,” One Ear told Dar Oakley. “It was with that oldest one that the kind began: the first to be what that kind is. The first being with sharp needles on its back instead of fur or hair. The first with teeth strong enough to bring down trees. And believe it—that first and oldest being never dies, for if it dies, the kind dies too. There are then no Porcupines, no Beavers.”
“For People, too?” Dar Oakley asked.
“Oh yes. Before there were People, there was one man and one woman in the Sky World. They had a daughter, and the daughter had two sons, the Good Son and the Bad Son. Then it went on until the world was finished, and People were everywhere People can be. And those first ones are still there at the beginning, and also now.”
Weren’t all People like that? Dar Oakley thought. Wasn’t it how things were in Ymr? They had their first ones who’d died long ago and never died, they had their kings hidden in the hollow hills. They had their angels and Saints in the world above and others in the world below. He’d known all this long ago and knew it now again. But were there such beings in Ka, and could they be sought and seen? If there were such a Crow as the one who’d sent those Ravens to him, that Crow wouldn’t be just a thought, or what People called a dream. No, if there were such a being in Ka, it would be just one more of the things-that-are. In Ka, there aren’t any other kinds of things.